Snow much fun!

We've been taking as much advantage of snow opportunities as we can - especially since there have been some special snow-related events here in the Upper Valley and surrounding areas! We've also found time for non-snow related fun, such as going to a Dartmouth Women's basketball game. For $18, Wyeth and I got front-row center seats! Luckily, we have noise-reducing headphones for Wyeth, because it was loud - but he quite happily watched the first half of the game. He didn't quite understand it all, though, since after every point he asked if Dartmouth won :-)

Definitely a very different experience from SEC basketball at UF!

View from our seats

We finally had warm enough weather to make the snow melt, so Wyeth and I were able to make a snowman without relying on buckets of water to make ice :-) Wyeth thought that making snowballs was great fun!

Snowman decorations courtesy of a snowman kit from "Santa" 

We also finally got Wyeth a sled, which he has loved! It means a lot of hiking up and down hills for JD, though, but that's good for him! 

One sunny day, while Wyeth was playing with Magnatiles, the sun was coming through the window *just right*, and Wyeth and JD did some color mixing! They really enjoyed seeing the different colors you'd get when you put different Magnatiles together.

I was impressed with JD's impromptu science lesson! And you can see that Wyeth loved it. 

Dartmouth's Winter Carnival was this past weekend, and 2 weekends ago they invited alumni, staff, faculty, and families to come help. I LOVED these two pictures - one of Wyeth and JD helping smooth the side of Darth Vader's helmet, and one of Wyeth helping shovel extra snow away from the sculpture while some of the Football players watched and cheered him on. Our friends, Mike and Meg, met us, and Wyeth and Alex played on the pile of extra snow for a long time together, which was a lot of fun!

That same weekend, we also went up Lincoln, NH (the town with Loon Mountain - where JD & I worked our first winter after college) to see the Ice Castle. It was pretty amazing - although I think that it is likely better at night when they have all sorts of lighting effects (icecastles.org). One of the first things that we saw when we walked in was Elsa and Olaf (Frozen). Wyeth ran right up to Olaf and gave him a big hug, but didn't want to give one to Elsa. She said she wouldn't hold it against him ;-)

They had several kid-sized ice slides that Wyeth loved! 

And a snow tunnel to crawl through!

It was really hard to get pictures to show the full scale and scope of the ice castle, but here are a few.

Water fountain - or "volcano" as Wyeth called it.

Then, after all of that excitement, we got another FOOT of snow this past week! The snow was literally over the top of the front porch - which is nearly 2 feet off the ground!

Wyeth loves walking through the snow to get to and from the car - a simple outing required snow pants, snow boots, mittens, and sometimes a jacket!

The weather warmed up this past weekend, and the snow is now melting and getting heavy. But that didn't stop us from have MORE snow fun! With Winter Carnival happening over the weekend, Hanover Parks and Recs actually hosts a family event on Occom Pond with ice skating, "couch potato races", food, snow sculptures, etc. We spent nearly 3 hours there, meeting up with our friends Meg and Mike again, as well as one of Wyeth's friends from school. We also saw lots of our other Dartmouth friends running around, too!

They had an ice slide, too! 

JD pushes Wyeth and Callum in a "couch potato" race (they have to eat potato chips). 

We found out that the ice is 19 inches thick - they had drilled out a small hole and had a ruler to measure the thickness. They also had fun games like catch a magnetic fish and win a cookie, penguin bowling, and of course the snow sculptures. After 3 hours, we were exhausted! 

With the warm weather and melting (don't worry, it won't last long!), Wyeth enjoyed helping "clear" the driveway, and spent nearly 1.5 hours with Dumper, Backhoe, and Bulldozer moving snow and ice around the driveway. Fire Truck and Airplane also came to help put out a "fire". It was raining, so I stayed on the porch as much as I could, although we also worked together to put treats in one of our trees for the animals (apple slices covered with peanut butter and seeds), and to clear some of the snow off the 4 Runner. 

Otherwise, I'm feeling good, Wyeth is excited for his baby brother, and JD has had a bit of time to spend with us during some slightly easier rotations.